This banana bread recipe is very straightforward and easy. The only thing that might might be a little strange is the buttermilk; most people don’t tend to have that on hand and don’t really want to but a whole container for just a 1/2 cup in a recipe. The alternative is to make the banana bread with sour milk. Not hard, you just add a tablespoon of vinegar to your measuring cup, then fill the rest of the way with milk and let it curdle for a few minutes. But more on the sour milk in a minute!
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I do read your comments, dear readers! The wonderful part about this recipe is that it’s flexible. Add some cinnamon, a handful of cranberries (my mother loves to do this), chocolate chips, or whatever else excites you. You can actually split this into two smaller loaves if you like; I just think it’s best baked in one giant loaf. We’ve made it in cake pans and as muffins and mini muffins, too. Go crazy! But be sure to adjust the baking time if you change the pan size.
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Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour10 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour20 minutes
Amazingly moist and full of flavor banana bread! There is a way around buying a whole quart of buttermilk for one use in this recipe. Pour a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar into a measuring cup then fill up to the half-cup mark before starting the recipe. The vinegar sours the milk, and is a great substitution for buttermilk.
Ingredients
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste (buy it here)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer; add eggs and mix well. Add sour milk (or buttermilk), vanilla and bananas to mixture. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and blend well. Bake in 1 loaf pan (I like this one!) for 70 minutes.
Adjust your time down if you're baking in small pans. The smaller the pan, the shorter the cook time. Muffins in this recipe take about 25 minutes. I suggest checking your bread every 5 minutes after 25 minutes to see if a toothpick comes out clean if you aren't using a standard loaf pan. Once the toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, the bread is done!
After you’ve got your bread baked and cooled, it’s time to decorate them up for gift-giving! See how I used some cellophane bags and stamps to make perfect little gifts below!
If you love this banana bread, my ZUCCHINI BREAD (click here)is another must-try!
There are so many different loaf pan varieties out there; and lots with pretty print on the sides for whatever holiday you’re gift giving at! You’ll just want to bake your bread in a container the recipient doesn’t feel like they have to return. I made that mistake once–sending little mini loaves out into the world in pretty little porcelain loaf pans. Every one of them came back!
I like to slip the loaf pans into a cellophane bag and add a little tag to them. With a pretty loaf pan, the decorating the gift part is easy!
For my tag, I really just had a lot of fun going through my box of scrapbook punches. You don’t have to take all these steps; leaving out one or two details won’t deter from your pretty package!
Cut two 1×4 pieces of cardstock. Punch one edge with an edge puncher; punch the other with a hole puncher. Punch or cut a heart out of your choice of colors of cardstock, and punch a hole near the middle of the heart.
Layer the two 1×4 pieces of stock on top of each other and add the heart, lining up all the holes. String through with baker’s twine.
Use your Expressionery.com stamp to put your name on the 1×4 paper, then tie around the neck of your cello bag. It’s the perfect little decoration for a loving little gift!
Don’t forget to pin the banana bread recipe for later!
Thank you toExpressionery.com for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and I adore the high quality of their products!
Ripe bananas are not only softer and easier to mash and blend into a batter, but they are also sweeter, which is why baking recipes specifically call for ripe bananas in ingredient lists. As the bananas ripen, the fruit converts starches to sugars, making them sweeter and more flavorful.
Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.
The tldr; is that she needed 6 very ripe bananas to work on this recipe, but as you know you can not just buy overly ripe bananas at the store, so she went to Twitter and called on her followers.
The banana bread will not rise much during baking and may sink slightly in the centre on cooling, but should not collapse competely. If it did collapse then it is likely that the banana bread had not quite baked fully (and in light of the ingredient change may have needed a slightly longer baking time).
As it sits at room temperature, starches convert to sugars, making the fruit sweeter and softer. These brown spots, often seen as a sign of spoilage, are actually a dead giveaway of peak banana bread potential. But, there is a limit. Black bananas or rotten bananas are a no-go.
In my experience, using bananas with a dark brown or even black peel for banana bread is ideal, as long as the inside isn't rotten. Key takeaway: As long as your bananas aren't starting to get moldy, infested with fruit flies or beginning to rot they aren't too ripe for baking banana bread.
You may be baking at too high a temperature. Home ovens are often not accurate. Try lowering the temperature by 25°F, and bake for a slightly longer time. If you are using a dark colored pan like many non-stick pans it will cause the outside to brown more quickly while the inside stays raw.
Overmixing is a common problem with quick breads and is certain to happen with an electric mixer. Use only 15 to 20 light hand strokes with a spoon when mixing the combined liquid and combined dry ingredients together.
Whether you choose to make banana bread in a stand mixer or use a simple bowl and spoon, the key to a beautiful, fluffy, moist loaf does not overmix the batter.
While there's no blanket rule, sticking to one to two bananas per day shouldn't cause issues for most people. With that said, remember that they are relatively high in carbohydrates, so eating them along with protein or fat is also advisable to support stable energy levels.
Teigen says to bake for 55-60 minutes. After 55 minutes, my banana bread was definitely still batter. I went back to cleaning and working out watching Netflix, checking on my bread every 10-ish minutes. After nearly two hours, my banana bread was deep brown and ready.
It turns out, sugar does more than just make things sweeter. When it comes to banana bread, cutting back on sugar will leave you with a dry loaf totally devoid of any distinguishable flavor.
Even sight or smell of food triggers a response in the brain's reward system. All foods are not equal, however, with the strongest hedonic response for the combination of sugar and fat. We have innate preference for sweet foods, which elicit a response as potent as that triggered by cocaine.
— Bananas turn purple due to a simple chemical reaction. The potassium in the fruit reacts with the sugars once any heat is applied, initially ... A chemical reaction takes place turning the colour. This enzymatic browning of sugars which then turn dark accelerated by the oven.
A banana that is perfectly ripe for eating is not at the same stage in its ripening process as one that is perfect for making into a banana cake. For baking, you need the sweetness that comes from an overripe banana – this means it will be very yellow with a few brown spots and feel soft.
“Very ripe and overripe bananas are rich in flavor and antioxidants, which can help benefit our immune systems,” says Gabriel. “They also take less time to digest, which can be beneficial, depending on the person.” This phase is also where bananas become just right for adding sweetness and heft to smoothies and shakes.
According to a research article published in the Global Journal of Nutrition & Food Science in 2022, this starch-to-sugar conversion is responsible for softening the fruit and increasing its sweetness as it ripens.
You can take advantage of ethylene's ripening properties at home by putting your banana into a closed paper bag; the paper will trap ethylene while letting in enough oxygen to help move the process along. For even faster ripening, add an apple, pear, apricot, or avocado — they also release ethylene.
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